Giuliani ally in Ukraine enlists former lawmaker aligned with Erik Prince to lobby Trump: report

On Friday, Politico reported that a Ukrainian associate of President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is hiring a former lawmaker affiliated with Erik Prince to lobby the administration on "corruption" issues.

"The business partner, former Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Artemenko, is registered to lobby using a different name," wrote Betsy Woodruff Swan. "He's also in the transportation and logistics business with Prince, and the two have been very busy because the coronavirus pandemic has snarled air travel around the world, Artemenko told POLITICO."

Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is infamous for founding the private mercenary group Blackwater, whose contractors have been accused of war crimes in Iraq. In January, Trump was reportedly considering a pardon for Blackwater employee Nicholas Slatten, who is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the Nisour Square massacre.

"The Giuliani associate who hired Artemenko is Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine's Rada who drew attention in U.S. media during President Donald Trump’s impeachment saga, and who was once a member of the Ukrainian political party that Paul Manafort worked for," continued the report. "Derkach met with Giuliani when the former New York mayor and amateur sleuth traveled to Ukraine to help produce a documentary on the Bidens for the controversial pro-Trump TV network One America News, as Reuters reported. The Ukrainian lawmaker has pushed allegations of corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and claims the previous Ukrainian administration meddled in the 2016 U.S. election."

Giuliani's "corruption" investigation of Ukraine was a pretense for attempting to extort their government into announcing an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden's family. The circumstances surrounding this scheme ultimately led to Trump's impeachment at the end of last year.

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